


Downhill - Lincoln

by zeitgeist77



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeist77/pseuds/zeitgeist77
Summary: Richie centricMajor projecting here, but I started writing fics like a year ago to get through so major depression and now I'm looking back at then and I feel like I've learned and grown a lot and I did a lot of that through this so...Anyways, thanks for a year in the fandom it's been lovelyTW: depression and religious oppression
Comments: 2





	Downhill - Lincoln

**Author's Note:**

> Richie centric
> 
> Major projecting here, but I started writing fics like a year ago to get through so major depression and now I'm looking back at then and I feel like I've learned and grown a lot and I did a lot of that through this so...
> 
> Anyways, thanks for a year in the fandom it's been lovely 
> 
> TW: depression and religious oppression

_It wasn't much, but it was something_. Richie always said it like that, never aloud just in his head. He'd reflected a lot since he finally moved away. LA was fun, God he would love to go back and eat at the greasy Crab Trap on the beach and drink mimosas on some snob's yacht. But, when he got back from Derry, he knew that that life was a goner. 

It was a good life, yes, good in the sense that the life belonged to someone with his name who he got the packages for, but who was not him. So, he picked up and moved. He had a big fight with his agency, but he was deadset on leaving. "I'm either working for you and leaving or just leaving. Your choice, baby." he'd winked at the management. He'd changed since they had last seen them. And, when he moved, he settled down in Tampa. He wasn't ready just yet to move into the LGBT friendly St.Petersburg which was right over the bridge from Tampa, but he was close enough and that was good for him. 

He found himself standing at the pool a lot. Half the time, he would wander around his house getting stoned and just wound up there. But, looking into the water showed him what he was thinking about most. He figured out that when everything was quiet and he wasn't entertaining anyone, he was crippled over staring into the water and just letting his mind go. He listened to music sometimes, but sometimes he just listened to the bugs die on the zapper and the distant car horns or tire screeches. It was good to sit and think. 

"I suppose," He'd spoken to the counselor who was basically the intro-therapist to getting a real one, "I've known I was unwell for a while. There were things I wasn't ready to let go of yet and I just need to admit it and do something about it." 

"Have you had any episodes where you either planned or intended to harm yourself or others?" She asked. She had the sweetest voice, the kindest tone, but it couldn't change her words and the way Richie felt like his bones had turned into metal and he was cold from the inside out again. It'd been so long since he'd felt afraid to talk about his 'episodes' (he called them that to make it easier to talk about them). He still woke up at night feeling like IT was in the room. He sometimes wondered if what happened was real or imaginary. Did a clown really kill two of my best friends? Sometimes he found himself gaslighting himself. _There's no way that happened. If that happened then you watched your soulmate die. And you're not fucking gay, are you?_ Which opened up another door with a quieter voice, _Don't look at the other boys, Richie. They'll know your secret._ And then he just couldn't eat anymore. It just didn't make sense to eat if you didn't want to make it to the next day. Just this constant weighing down. 'Just get out of bed this morning' he heard Eddie say just before he opened his eyes and saw daylight. Everything was quiet just then. 

He'd woken up on the couch, his head ringing and his eyelids heavy, but he refused to let his eyes close. "Eds?" he asked, pulling himself off of the couch. "Eds?" he said, opening the curtains and letting the light in. He realized it was just a dream. It took a second, but when he was all caught up, every voice woke up too. He threw himself into the pool and screamed once he was under the water. It was cold and he felt nothing but splitting pain and then it all went numb. He stayed under and let himself float back to the top. As he floated, he felt the tingle of alcohol in his system reminding him that alcohol can't freeze. There wasn't anything left to do. The few times he'd been this low, he'd gone to mass with his aunt to see if he could feel something, but he just couldn't do that again. So, he did the responsible thing, for once, and went to a therapist. "I guess I would say that I have never planned anything, but if someone were to poison me or hit me with a car, I wouldn't flinch." his attitude didn't reflect his words and he could tell she was getting a bad vibe from him, so he added, "Just hope it goes quick," and laughed which made it feel worse. When the appointment was over, they had scheduled a day for him to come back and a couple of exercises to practice while he was waiting. He'd never considered he had PTSD until the therapist said that he was exhibiting traits in a person dealing with trauma. 

He laughed when he canceled all future appointments with them, claiming it was because he was moving. "There's just no fucking way that was traumatic. Like, yeah it was scary, but I'm over it," he said aloud into the bathroom mirror. "Does this look like the face of a man still afraid of a fucking clown?" he got up close to the mirror and made some faces to look horrendous. But, then he thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and he politely didn't look into the mirror for two weeks. It was politeness, not fear, he promised. 

It was Christmas when he broke and went to church with his mom. He went back to Derry for a week to see her and hopefully Beverly if she and Ben could make the trip. December 24th, he sat with his mom in the fifth pew from the front, their family pew, and he watched the children's nativity play. The whole time he sat there, he felt sick to his stomach. Ever face in the stained glass looked down on him and glared. He felt like he needed to look over his shoulder every couple of seconds, but he just bowed his head to avoid doing so. When they rose and walked to get their bread and wine shot, he found his hands shaking as he looked into the cup of wine. He felt like he was going to throw up, but in his mind, he heard _shut up and swallow it_. So he looked at the bright shiny angel atop the tree and forced the bread down like a pill. But, that was when he realized that it was the voice he'd always been so afraid to hear. From there, he figured it out. He looked intently at the ground through two tears threatening to pour out when he finally closed his eyes and let them drop down his cheeks. He steadied his breathing and made sure to remember it. Don't let this memory get corrupted. 

"Listen, I'm on the up and up," Richie said in a side conversation that he decided the mean voice couldn't hear. He finally realized that it was his own brain that he got to control and that he could reject that voice. "I'm writing my feelings, I'm with friends, I'm not doing too much, please." he pleaded with the side of his brain that had started to develop a conscience. _Fine, but if you take this too far, we're throwing the juul away._ "It's a deal!" It was so strange, but it worked. He sat on Ben's back deck at his lodge in Wyoming. Beverly was in Milan, but Richie promised to stay in town long enough to see her too. One of Ben's friends had gotten his hands on some shrooms, so they all sat outside on the deck and sipped on their shroom tea while the day slipped into a cold night. Richie, at some point, had decided to go piss out at the treeline, so he found himself walking around a little bit. Eventually, he found a stream and sat beside it. 

"You might fall in," he heard. It wasn't in his head, but it was the voice that was playing his conscience. He turned to look at the figure, but there wasn't anyone there. He then looked down at the water and saw Eddie. His heart stopped beating and he felt like the world was turning to sand beneath him. He felt like he was sinking. "Don't do that! The ground is hard! The ground is hard!" Eddie shrieked and suddenly, Richie saw that the ground was in fact hard and his elbow just needed straightening. "Dude, holy shit!" 

"Dude, what the fuck was that?" Richie asked. 

"Baby, I live in your head. We both know it's because you believed a little bit too much in that As Above, So Below movie," Eddie shot back. 

"Smart hot woman battling demons? Eds, how could I not? She was beautiful AND smart!" 

"Richie, why am I here?" Eddie asked, making Richie stop. 

"I didn't bring you here."

"I didn't bring me here either. Why would I appear to you?"

"Because you died?" 

"Okay sad, but what makes you special? I had a wife, why don't I appear to her?" 

"Because I had the fattest crush on you when we were kids and apparently now and I just realized it was a crush, not just bros being bros." 

"Rich, I loved you too. You made me laugh and you let me be angry. You gave me so much."

"But what if I loved you and you just liked how I made you feel? What if you didn't love me the way I loved you. Worse, what if you did and you still died?"

"Richie, you've gotta stop looking at the what if's of the past. That's way past over now."

"But, I'll never know. I need to know," Richie felt like he was gonna cry. He'd raised his voice. 

"There's no evidence and the witness is dead. You watch Criminal Minds, what does that mean?" Eddie had retorted in the same tone. 

"What if I miss you?" Richie asked miserably. "What do I do with that?" 

"That's the big one," Eddie said. Richie put his cold hands on his hot eyes and let himself relax. He looked up at the dripping trees and the pops of fireworks that would show up every now and again. "Rich, I think you need to move on. Even if we were soulmates, we didn't get to meet each other this time. Maybe next time around, if you're up for it." 

Richie laughed and kept looking around at everything. He wishes he could draw, but about all that he could do was the superman logo. "I still don't have any plans for the future," Richie admitted, "I could keep being a comedian or become some eclectic shop owner down in Florida. It's grown on me down there." 

"Whatever you do, I know you'll be doing okay," Eddie said finally and then faded away. 

Richie sat there for another minute before he decided his hands were too cold and he needed to go inside. 

There wasn't a big turn around in his life after that, but he found some changes to make and forced himself to make them. The first thing he did was go back to his house in Tampa and put up a bisexual pride flag in his bedroom. He sat down and watched some movies on Netflix with LGBT characters and forced himself to stop saying his mother's prayers. Finally, he stopped buying clothes that looked like he didn't know what the inside of a closet looks like. It wasn't much, but it was good enough.


End file.
